It should come as little surprise that we found no perfect devices in this roundup. After all, they're the first generation of a new product category. But two stood out for their comprehensiveness and intuitive designs.

Especially suited for small to medium-size businesses, the Aladdin eSafe Appliance is rich in features and easy to set up and manage. It scans all your network traffic for e-mailborne viruses and other malicious code, inappropriate content, spam, and surfing sessions. Prices start as low as $2,800 (list) for 25 users.

The McAfee e500 is meant for larger organizations, and the company claims it can support 17,000 users per device. For 500 users, it costs $14,696, including software and support. The product provides a Web-based management interface and separate management for incoming and outgoing traffic. Options for antivirus scanning include variable scanning levels, adjustable heuristics for hunting macros or program viruses, and a choice of quarantining, cleaning, or discarding infected e-mails.

The CipherTrust IronMail 110 earns an honorable mention for its intrusion detection in addition to the features of the two Editors' Choice products. The IronMail is so comprehensive that it is quite complex, perhaps to a fault. That may rule it out for smaller businesses, but large enterprises should definitely consider it.

We didn't consider the Symantec Gateway Security for an Editors' Choice, because it includes a firewall, a VPN, load balancing, and intrusion detection. Although it appears to be a solid product, we were unable to test or review in depth its many additional features and therefore found it difficult to directly compare it with the more targeted appliances.

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About the Author

Davis D. Janowski is Lead Analyst for Web Applications and Software, charged with covering the likes of Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, and millions of other Internet and Web companies. Prior to this, he served as Section Editor for Consumer Networking, GPS Products, Phones & PDAs (Mobile and VoIP); Associate Editor for Networking Infrastructure; and As... See Full Bio

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